Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in immediate open-access journals.

Academic libraries can help promote the adoption of open educational resources, but ultimately the push for open content has to be about more than textbooks, advocates said this week during the Open Ed Conference.

Sometimes when you hear people talk about open access in the humanities, they’ll say “open access is completely different in the humanities than in the sciences.” But I think this argument is painting with too broad a stroke. If you talk to scientists, you learn there are very different scholarly communications practices even within the sciences; high energy physicists don’t necessarily publish in the same way as zoologists or computer scientists. There may be more similarities between some scientific and some humanities disciplines than you might think.

This year’s Generation Open theme for International Open Access Week celebrates these significant contributions that students and early career researchers are already making within the Open Access movement and highlights their importance as future faculty, administrators, publishers, and policymakers. Just as Open Access Week has continued to grow since students partnered with SPARC to found it in 2007, it will be exciting to watch the impact the next generation of scholars and researchers has in making Open Access the new default as they launch their careers, publish their own work openly, and make their voices heard.

Hundreds of events will take place across the globe to highlight the power that Open Access has to increase the impact of scientific and scholarly research during the seventh annual Open Access Week taking place from October 20-26, 2014.

“Because we know that education is a cornerstone for progress…we’re going to do more to help citizens in other countries, especially students, access the incredible online educational tools and resources we have in the States.”